


Jungian animus proportions

by Petra



Category: Ashes to Ashes
Genre: Ageplay, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-13
Updated: 2010-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-10 02:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/94436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone had to save her, the poor girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jungian animus proportions

**Author's Note:**

> For the Ageplay square in Kink Bingo. Spoilers for Ashes to Ashes 1x08.

  
Alex remembers CID better every time she thinks of it, both the version she knows now and the version she saw back then, from a child's perspective.

Cradled in Gene's arms, for God's sake, and held tight against his chest, safe as houses.

Safer than cars, at least. Cars--

She fights herself for all of an hour after it all goes to hell, and for most of that hour she's drowning her memories and her wish to get the hell away from her memories in Luigi's finest vino de casa. That doesn't make it easier to forget; it makes it easier to remember, to remember the goddamned lion who saved her when Evan was shellshocked and dumbfounded.

Someone had to save her, the poor girl, poor little Alex Drake with her universe gone up in flames in front of her eyes and her father--her father--

Of all the people in the universe, how could it have been Gene?

But it was, and she knows it down to her bones, whatever that means if this is--isn't--real. When she wakes up, she'll have to ask Evan.

She picks up the second bottle of wine and refills her glass, drinking a toast to her mother and a toast to the ashes. When she reaches for it again, it's not there. "Luigi," she says. "Someone's made off with my wine."

"I'll start an investigation," Gene says, rough and gentle all at once. "What kind of wine was it, Bolls?"

She looks up, looks him in the eye for the first time since, and looks at the wine he's taken from her. "Have it," she says, and stands up haughtily.

Tries, very hard, to stand up haughtily, but for the second time all day since she was a kid she's in his arms, because she's falling. Fallen, maybe, and not just her knickers, this time, but hook, line, and bloody sinker.

"Damn it," she says, and lets herself lean on him. "I want to go home."

"I'll walk you," he offers, ever the gentleman, as though it's far at all.

"I'll put it all on your tab, signora," Luigi tells her on her way past, as though he'd do anything else. When the obsequious Italian barman figment stops charging her for her wine, she'll know she's really gone round the twist. At least there's a little logical consistency in this delusion.

Gene smells the same as he did when she was a girl, and holds her with the same confidence while she gets her door open.

"Don't go," Alex tells him, the words blurred by the wine. Everything's blurred, and she nearly trips over her own shoes on the way through the door.

He catches her again, again, and she buries her face in his chest--he's taller than she expected, but not that tall, but this is what she needs, and as an excellent bizarre psychological construct of Jungian animus proportions--hers or Tyler's?--he holds her and strokes her hair. "It's all right, Bolly," he says, and for a moment, she thinks he's calling her Molly.

Molly is probably all right, somewhere, though she doesn't have a Gene Hunt to come charging in and save her when Evan stands by useless. Molly needs Alex.

Alex needs her mum--can't have her--needs her dad--can't believe him--needs Evan--wherever he is--has Gene.

He's warm and comforting in ways that don't fit the brusque cowboy-sheriff image, and he strokes her hair like she's eight years old. It would be easier if she'd stayed that way. She could cling to his hands and beg for his help, press her forehead against him and weep as though there's nothing to be ashamed of in it.

She's weeping now, as freely as she did the first time she saw the accident, though she would've sworn, once, that she wept on Evan then. But she didn't. It was just like this, and she can let herself weep like the terrified child she was.

It's such a relief to trust him entirely. She's already weak in the knees from wine and shock, but if she falls, he'll catch her. Alex remembers that, and how it felt, how it feels to be a girl in his arms, lifted like the weight of the world isn't on her, held like nothing matters but keeping her safe.

Gene keeps his arm around her and rocks her, like Evan should have, like he might have, and Alex lets Gene take care of her. Apparently, he always has.

She wonders how convincingly she'd have to swoon to get him to carry her to bed so she doesn't have to be old enough to know better on the way.


End file.
